Welcome Matt: Who Bo Horvat's wingers should be for the Canucks this season

Bo Horvat stands to be the big winner of this Canucks offseason.

J.T. Miller got the rich contract extension, and Horvat might yet get one too, but the Canucks captain should finally have some playmates worthy of his flank.

The age-old question around Horvat — much like the age-old question around the Sedins post-Carter and pre-Burrows — is who should play with Bo?

Even he’s talking about it, after meeting with the media yesterday.

thought it interesting to hear #Canucks Horvat — accurately — point out he’s had a rotating cast of wingers the ‘past 5 or 6 years’. Says he’s excited by off-season additions of Mikheyev and Kuzmenko

— Jeff Paterson (@patersonjeff) September 12, 2022

The addition of free-agent wingers Ilya Mikheyev and Andrei Kuzmenko have made for a deep forward group that should be able to satisfy head coach Bruce Boudreau’s intention of playing three centremen.

For me, I’d like to see Horvat play with Kuzmenko and Vasily Podkolzin.

As we know, Bo is a shoot-first centre. He’s not a distributor or setup artist.

Kuzmenko comes with a bit of a reputation for creating from his KHL days. He’s totalled 90 assists over his last four years there.

It’s also an appropriate starting point for the Russian rookie. It’s low-pressure enough that the demands to produce won’t be too great, too soon. The Miller and Pettersson lines can take shoulder the scoring load along with the power play.

On right wing, I’d like to see Podkolzin because I think he should graduate to top-nine duty following a rookie season where he was eased into the lineup and got opportunity late in the campaign when injuries struck.

Like Horvat, he plays that bull-in-a-china-shop game, straight lines and driving the net. Think they’d make a good bang-and-crash pair, score some of those short-area ugly goals.

Granted, part of my choices here were governed by priorities with the other two lines. I think Pettersson needs some speed beside him, so going to place Mikheyev there.

Also think Brock Boeser needs to play with a creative centremen, so going to give him either Petey or Miller as his pivot.

That means stalwart Tanner Pearson, who has played well with Horvat over the years, finds a new centre. And of course Nils Höglander, who was Bo’s second-most used linemate last year, must first earn a spot in the opening night lineup before we assign him a line.